FROSTVALE, MN – Winter cleanup crews inadvertently transformed dozens of rural freight corridors into elaborate snow labyrinths this week after a mapping error caused snowplows to carve artistic spirals, loops, and geometric patterns instead of clearing straight lanes.
The issue began during a software upgrade to the automated guidance system used by many regional plow fleets. Instead of mapping to the grid-straight plowing paths, the system pulled data from a public-domain art database featuring Celtic knots, crop-circle patterns, abstract spirals, and one extremely ambitious fractal.
The result: trucks traveling through Frostvale awakened to find highways resembling giant puzzle designs carved into the snow.
Some corridors featured elegant circular paths that looped back into themselves. Others had forked passages that required drivers to guess which route eventually rejoined the highway. One particularly ornate stretch reportedly forced a driver to make nine right turns before reaching a rest stop just 300 feet away.
Authorities scrambled to correct the paths, but not before adventurous truckers began livestreaming their “maze runs,” comparing notes on the complexity of each pattern. A group of flatbed drivers even formed an informal league, competing to see who could navigate the winter labyrinths the fastest without using satellite imagery.
Despite the confusion, safety incidents remained surprisingly low. “Traffic was slow because everyone was too confused to speed,” a state official admitted. “Hard to cause accidents when you’re crawling through a snow mandala at five miles an hour and questioning reality.”
Some snowplow operators defended the results as “accidental beauty.” One driver said, “I didn’t mean to make a nine-mile spiral, but once it started, I committed. It’s art.”
Logistics analysts, meanwhile, are bracing for possible ripple effects in delivery schedules, warning that artistic plowing – while charming – is not recognized as an approved freight-routing method.
Cleanup crews have since restored normal lanes, though several drivers expressed sadness to see the snow mazes disappear. “That loop-de-loop got me through a tough day,” one said. “Most excitement I’ve had on I-92 in years.”
Transportation leaders say future software updates will undergo stricter testing, though some admit quietly that the maze patterns “did have a nice vibe.”
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